San Marino man sentenced to 10 years in $9 million mortgage fraud and tax evasion scheme

LOS ANGELES - A San Marino man has been sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for defrauding banks and other lenders by using "straw borrowers" and bogus documents to obtain millions of dollars in loans for houses and high-end vehicles that included Ferraris and Lamborghini.

Scott Dority, 54, was sentenced last Monday by United States District Judge R. Gary Klausner. Dority pleaded guilty on March 14, 2011 to wire fraud, conspiracy, aggravated identity theft and two counts of tax evasion.

As part of his guilty plea, Dority admitted that his fraudulent conduct caused at least $4 million in losses to financial institutions that issued mortgages and approximately $5 million in losses to institutions that issue loans for the sports cars and recreational vehicles.

Dority also admitted in court that he failed to file tax returns for 2005 and 2006, even though he had hundreds of thousands of dollars in income in each of those years.

According to a now-unsealed court document, Dority, along with others, recruited people with good credit to act as straw buyers to purchase residential homes or expensive vehicles. Dority created a package of materials - including fake bank statements, fake pay stubs and bogus fake tax returns - to make it appear that these straw buyers had sufficient assets and income to pay back loans used to purchase the real estate and vehicles. These fake documents were then submitted to lenders who relied upon them to issue more than $9 million in mortgage and vehicle loans.

As part of the 121-month prison sentence, Dority received a mandatory two-year prison term for aggravated identity theft.

The investigation into this scheme was conducted jointly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, IRS - Criminal Investigation, and the United States Secret Service.